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Base Mac Mini Sold Out From Apple Online Store

gilby101 said:
That is not what I see. The AU store has lots of models available up to 48GB with delivery up to July. Only 64GB are unavailable.

Edit: Some 16GB models are also unavailable. Need to want 4TB SSD. [Does anyone buy a 16GB/4TB model?]
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Those are false availabilities.
 
theorist9 said:
Sorry, I've no idea what "build-to-warehouse" means, and didn't find any hits on Google. The phrase is cryptic, so you'll need to define it.

If I were to guess at what you mean, you're saying Apple maintains warehouse stock of the high-config units, but the low-config units are BTO. But that would be backwards -- normally companies maintain stock of the low-config (= high-volume) units, and fulfill the high-config custom orders using BTO.

From the rest of your post, it sounds like you're claiming Apple won't be offering high-spec versions of the M5 Mini like it did for the M4. But you have no idea if that is true, which means your explanation for why Apple discontinued the high-tier models before the low-tier models is based on pure speculation, no?

Note that I'm not arguing whether this is an upcoming-refresh-situation or a low-supply-situation. I'm instead questioning the reasons given in post#2 for the prediction that it's a refresh.
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BTO used to mean that you asked for X Y Z and some assembly tech in the USA pulls those parts and inserts them into your bare machine. MacPro with X memory, Y storage, Z graphics card, all started from the same assembly line “bare” MacPro waiting for parts. Stock configs were assembled to stock configuration and shipped out to retailers on the assembly line.

Macs are SoC now. Maybe, maybe, they have bins of different boards sitting idle ready to plop in a chasis and ship. But that wouldn’t be efficient.

In reality, Apple makes a BATCH of various configurations and ships them to a drop ship warehouse. When you BTO your Mac, you are simply assigned a unit from the warehouse. If none are available, you are assigned a unit from the next batch, or in the queue for the next. If they underestimated demand for certain configs, next run may change the mix.

None of these BTO machines are sent to bulk retailers. Only “stock” configs are sent to retailers. Specialists may get more options, but not all options.

In the past, running out of specific configs was uncommon unless a graphics card was in limited supply. All BTOs took about the same time to assemble and deliver.

Now, during a mature production cycle, certain configs will ship in a week and others longer because when you order you are just getting a place in line for that specific configuration. Your “order now” click doesn’t connect to China or Vietnam directly and say “build this computer for Charlie.” And because of that, some customers end up buying a different configuration because they need it now, not in the summer.

So it’s not BTO.
 
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I think it’s due for a refresh. I placed an order for three a week after my friend placed an order for a single unit. My order was shipped two days ago and his single quantity order is still awaiting shipment. I think it makes sense that they would prioritize orders with multiple units so when the refresh hits, they’d save money from only offering complimentary upgrades to those who ordered a single unit, rather than those with a large order.
 
theorist9 said:
Except in this case the "out-of-stock" status wasn't applied to all the Minis at once, but instead hit the higher-RAM configs first.

If this were due to an imminent refresh, wouldn't Apple have applied that to all the Minis at once?

Or, when Apple has done a model refresh in the past, have they staggered the out-of-stock status among different configs within that model?

If not, that would suggest this is due to a shortage rather than a refresh decision.

Though that would not preclude that there's also a refresh coming, if Apple sourcing for the LPDDR5X-9600 used in the M5 is better than that for the LPDDR5X-7500 used in the base M4 and the LPDDR5X-8333 in the M4 Pro and Max
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It did hit the lowest storage config now.
 
abcmax said:
Only variants with a 256 GB SSD are unavailable in Poland.
Click to expand...

gilby101 said:
That is not what I see. The AU store has lots of models available up to 48GB with delivery up to July. Only 64GB are unavailable.

Edit: Some 16GB models are also unavailable. Need to want 4TB SSD. [Does anyone buy a 16GB/4TB model?]
Click to expand...

In Sweden it also says "Currently Unavailable" for all the base model configurations. Only M4 Pro can be ordered.
 
ikramerica said:
BTO used to mean that you asked for X Y Z and some assembly tech in the USA pulls those parts and inserts them into your bare machine. MacPro with X memory, Y storage, Z graphics card, all started from the same assembly line “bare” MacPro waiting for parts. Stock configs were assembled to stock configuration and shipped out to retailers on the assembly line.

Macs are SoC now. Maybe, maybe, they have bins of different boards sitting idle ready to plop in a chasis and ship. But that wouldn’t be efficient.

In reality, Apple makes a BATCH of various configurations and ships them to a drop ship warehouse. When you BTO your Mac, you are simply assigned a unit from the warehouse. If none are available, you are assigned a unit from the next batch, or in the queue for the next. If they underestimated demand for certain configs, next run may change the mix.

None of these BTO machines are sent to bulk retailers. Only “stock” configs are sent to retailers. Specialists may get more options, but not all options.

In the past, running out of specific configs was uncommon unless a graphics card was in limited supply. All BTOs took about the same time to assemble and deliver.

Now, during a mature production cycle, certain configs will ship in a week and others longer because when you order you are just getting a place in line for that specific configuration. Your “order now” click doesn’t connect to China or Vietnam directly and say “build this computer for Charlie.” And because of that, some customers end up buying a different configuration because they need it now, not in the summer.

So it’s not BTO.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know what BTO means. I was instead asking what you meant by "build to warehouse". From your description, it sounds like you just made up a term for "order from stock". If it's out of stock, you wait for the warehouse to get it back into stock. Same as always. Don't know why you decided to create a cryptic term for a standard process. That just creates unnecessary confusion.


More broadly, even with that cleared up, there's not logical consistency between your last and penultimate posts:

Previously, you wrote that the expensive model are BTO, but the lower configs aren't:

"The most expensive models aren’t BTO ... They continued to allow lower config BTOs to be ordered."

But now you're saying none of the models are BTO:

"....during a mature production cycle, certain configs will ship in a week and others longer because when you order you are just getting a place in line for that specific configuration....So it’s not BTO."

Sorry, it's just too much work for me to try to make sense of what you're saying.

So I'm going to bow out of this conversation.
 
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ikramerica said:
Apple will not stop selling their high volume products due to a supply chain issue. The idea that they will postpone products and simply stop making models for a while is ludicrous.
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But that’s precisely what’s happening. Apple will not sell you a base Mac mini. They are not backordered or merely seeing delayed shipping, they are “unavailable”. Big difference.

Now if it’s only for six days and new M5 models come out next week, then fine. But if there are no new models until WWDC, or even all the way until October as Gurman is reporting, then it’s not so ludicrous, is it?
 
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goobot said:
If all this is due to the ai garbage, governments should really step in and require companies to fulfill consumer demand first and let ai companies get the leftovers rather than the other way around
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These are going to consumers. They’re running local models like OpenClaw which are AI agents that go online and complete tasks for them. This is actually better than some huge data center.

But in the long run? AI is going to eat us all.
 
poematik13 said:
The openclaw hype seems fake and mostly via influencers buying them up just to use for content and then return. I bet there will be tons of these hitting the refurb store later this summer.

OTOH, the memory shortage is a real thing, and apple is likely prioritizing the new M5 models instead of the existing old model
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You are wrong. Mac mini will continue to sell out. It's the cheapest and most effective hardware for running llms locally. An equivalent pc setup is 2-4x the money at least and consume much more electricity.

Demand for mac mini will only grow as openai and Anthropic are lowering quotas for their fixed monthly plans. It's now becoming cheaper to buy a 48-64gb mac mini than pay $500-1000 per month in api credits.

I have ordered a mac mini and will order more before apple increase prices.
 
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Last summer I got M4 Max studio with 64GB of RAM. I have work M3 Macbook Pro with 16GB and recently got M5 air with 16GB (a beast of a laptop). And I got a PC (running Linux) with 64GB of DDR5 RAM that is now worth more than when I bought it. Wife uses M1 Air and she is happy with it. I think I’m good for some time computer wise 😂
 
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I wonder if the Foxconn plant in Houston is going to assemble any M4 Minis, or go straight to the M5s? They're supposed to start this fall.
 
gilby101 said:
That is not what I see. The AU store has lots of models available up to 48GB with delivery up to July. Only 64GB are unavailable.

Edit: Some 16GB models are also unavailable. Need to want 4TB SSD. [Does anyone buy a 16GB/4TB model?]
Click to expand...
4 TB SSD base M4 Mac minis never existed.
 
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Situation here in Spain:

Mac mini base model, M4 256GB 16GB of RAM: completely unavailable, no ETA given.

Mac mini M4 512GB 16GB of RAM: available in June

Mac mini M4 512 24GB of RAM: available in July

Mac mini M4 with 32GB of RAM: Not available at all.

This is all quite weird, honestly, and with the base model being completely sold out, I would totally expect this is because the M5 model should have been released already, or is going to be released soon.

The only reason why Apple might be holding off the M5 Mac mini is because they fear it could be sold massively for AI home servers, leaving them without stock quickly. So maybe, just maybe, they limit the RAM upgrade options. Hopefully they won’t.
 
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